


Marbles

by cafeanna



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Awkward Missed Connections, M/M, Med Student Leorio Paladinknight, Missed Connections, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 12:48:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29064597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cafeanna/pseuds/cafeanna
Summary: “Have you ever wondered why they give you the little glass marble if you’re not supposed to have it?” He asked, giving the bottle a little shake, drawing a low rattling noise.The goth stared at him. Expression suddenly somber.“Oh,” he said, voice surprisingly soft, rough from sleep. He yawned. “Yeah, I can get it for you.”OR, Kuroro shows Leorio how to get Ramune marbles out of the bottle.
Relationships: Kuroro Lucifer | Chrollo Lucifer/Leorio Paladiknight
Comments: 10
Kudos: 20





	Marbles

**Author's Note:**

> *deep inhale* Well, my friends and I were talking about how we used to harvest Ramune marbles, and my brain went—ooh, smells like content, and tucked that memory away for a ship—
> 
> But, we know the drill. New pairing. Shitty one-shot. That’s how I do things. This is so cracky, I'm sorry.

Leorio loved learning.

He loved learning about medicine. All the mysteries of the human body and its many nuances. Ways to soothe and stem, how to trace threats of disease and feel for breaks. He was wonderful with hands-on learning. Capable of doing. Great with people.

But he hated studying.

He hated the certifiable mush his brain shifted into around midterms when he was full of nail-bitten anxiety and booked with deadlines, labs, and essays. Eating only bananas and rice cakes, drinking more coffee than water, and smoking down to the filter. He was coming to the conclusion that when he finally got his doctorate that he would never—and _never—_ write an academic paper.

Just quietly save lives and hire a ghost-writer for his memoirs.

Frustrated, he slammed his book shut with a touch more force than necessary. Not that anyone around him seemed to mind.

Typically, he preferred his dorm room to the campus library. He liked walking around his in boxers and playing music, but his suitemate had texted him on his way back from class asking if he could have the room and Leorio was not about to deny him. Although, he was curious about who Zepile was seeing. He hadn’t mentioned anybody.

It took him too long to realize that the forceful slam of his textbook had woken up the guy sitting across from him.

He had jolted at the initial sound, but when his head rose from the desk, Leorio ducked down over his notes. Innocuous as the guy glanced around. Leorio half-expected there to be some a called out, some sort of questioning or mumble of confusion, but nothing followed the dramatic awakening.

Silence hung between them.

After a moment, Leorio reached for the Ramune soda he brought along and dared a glance up only to flinch.

The guy was staring at him. Or, past him.

His gaze hung on just over Leorio’s shoulder. The shadows under his eyes made longer by the twin smudges of eyeliner on his waterline, unseeing.

Leorio narrowed his eyes at him.

 _Creepy_ , he thought, draining the last of his drink.

He and his table partner had not uttered a single word to each other since Leorio sat across from him a few hours ago. In fact, the Jimmy Urine looking motherfucker had been very much knocked out when Leorio approached his table. No noisy shifting. No mumbling. Just a flat knock-out, that had tempted Leorio to check for signs of life as he shoved a collection of old dusty volumes off his side of the table to make space.

Leorio expected him to comment on that, at least. He hadn’t exactly been too nice about it.

There were plenty of seats available at the tables around them now, but earlier the place had been filled with groups, agonizing over projects and loud chatter. This had been the only viable option. And now he was too comfy to move.

He tipped the bottle to his lips again, only to remember it was empty and sighed, marble clanking against the glass.

The goth’s eyes flickered to him as if sensing his gaze. The sleepy bleariness retreating from the corners of his vision. Pink in the cornea, watery gray at the iris.

Embarrassment at getting caught staring had Leorio shifting uncomfortably in his seat. Throat clearing.

“Have you ever wondered why they give you the little glass marble if you’re not supposed to have it?” He asked, giving the bottle a little shake, drawing a low rattling noise.

The goth stared at him. Expression suddenly somber.

Nothing.

Leorio felt the nervous kick against his cheek. The slow creep of self-consciousness gnarling against his earlier embarrassment when his half-dead neighbor blinked again, slow understanding.

“Oh,” he said, voice surprisingly soft, rough from sleep. He yawned. “Yeah, I can get it for you.”

A sudden chill rolled down his spine.

Leorio had a distinct memory of Killua and Gon’s version of getting the marble, all broken edges and glitter-prickled punctures, and shook his head. “Oh, no, thanks. I don’t really—” But the half-dead Jimmy Urine was already leaning up out of his chair and stretching across the table, snatching the bottle out of Leorio’s hands. “Um—”

“It’s really easy.” The goth said, rattling the bottleneck for good measure as he walked around the table and settling in the chair beside Leorio. “Do me a favor? Let me know if that librarian comes over here.” He said, dragging his chair closer until his bare knees were touching Leorio’s khaki clad ones. “He hates me.”

He said it like a fact.

Leorio didn’t even have to glance back to know which one.

The librarian on desk currently was none other than Blond Hottie, a student worker, who had been on Leorio’s campus radar since September. An infatuation that, however questioned by his friends, Leorio was willing to standby because although the librarian was a total hot-head and stickler for rules, he was also, in equal parts, a hottie.

But he didn’t really feel like explaining his scale to strangers.

It never really went over well.

His attention skimmed when the goth held the bottle under the table, balancing it on his thigh and with the other, he pulled out a lighter—a Bic, cheap plastic with an American eagle—his paint-chipped nail snapping against the flint wheel until he got a light.

Leorio watched, fascinated as he tipped the bottle into the flame, holding the lighter just at the edge where the plastic met glass.

They were sitting close together. Knees touching, the goth’s head bowed nearly against the Leorio’s shoulder. He could smell the product in his hair, coming loose from its slicked-back style and curling at his temples. A little greasy and disheveled from sleep. The fluffy collar of his jacket smelled like cigarettes—all things clove and rolled nicotine, maybe even a little floral.

He was so startlingly _close,_ that it took a moment for Leorio’s brain to jog back to the fact that he did not know him.

He leaned back in his chair a moment, peering over at the help desk where the blond librarian was sat, undisturbed. A thick book in hand. A mug of tea hovering against his lip, reading glassing riding low on the bridge of his nose—

The goth nudged him with his knee. His voice rising to a conspiratorial whisper. 

“Hey, hey, cover me.”

“Right, sorry.” Leorio leaned back to him. He felt more embarrassed for getting caught daydreaming than anything. The scent of burning plastic was almost sobering. He frowned. Someone was bound to notice that. “Do you plan on melting that off?”

“Nah, just loosen it a bit.” As he said this, his white-pressed thumb eased off the lighter, dropping it on Leorio’s notes before leaning up in his chair, hand riffling through his jacket, searching. “Now where did I put that—?”

Leorio glanced back again. The help desk. The hot librarian.

Tea set aside.

“—there we are.”

Leorio glanced back, barely having a moment to register _knife_ and _near him_ before the partially melted bottle cap was skuttling across the tabletop, tipping near the edge and dropping to the carpet below. Out of sight. Out of mind.

His ears perked at the sound of the marble rolling against the glass.

“And we are.” The goth lifted the marble between them, pinched between two fingers.

“Well, shit.” Leorio breathed, still coming down from the panic of the sudden appearance of the knife—now set aside on Leorio’s class notes with the bottle and lighter. He relaxed, amused. “That was actually kind of cool.”

He shrugged. “Told you it was easy.”

“I never thought about it too much.” 

Leorio moved to take it, but then his hand was taken, palm turned up as the glass bead was placed almost delicately in his own, cold fingers curling over his. As if it were a deep-sea pearl.

He glanced from his folded hands to the goth. “Um, thank you?”

There was a crease running from where his cheek pressed against his jacket while he slept, pulling at the corner of his mouth when he smiled. “No problem.”

It was almost endearing.

He could hear a voice that sounds a bit like Zepile in the back of his head: _what’s that you said about the ratio between hot and crazy?_

His eyes snapped away, catching on the abandoned seat across from him. The stack of arcane books with cracked spines and dusty book jackets. He eyed carvings of silver-embossed letters, snatches of old Russian names and Biblical references. “So, uh, what do you study?”

The cold hands withdrew, leaving a phantom chill in their wake.

The Goth Hottie folded his pocketknife with his thumb, tucking it back into the innermost pocket of his coat. It took him a moment to answer, not as if he were considering the question, but almost as if he had not heard it. His eyes flickered back to him—deep gray, glint with silver—and smiled. The pull of his lips secretive and endearing.

“Oh, I don’t go here.”

It took Leorio a second.

A minute.

“You . . . don’t?”

The Goth Hottie shrugged and Leorio was about to ask him to elaborate when something—an old laminated copy of _War and Peace—_ sailed past his nose.

Leorio’s reaction was immediate.

Long limbs wind-milling backward and nearly toppling out of his chair as his brain tried to keep up with the new insanity unraveling before him. The librarian was standing behind his table, nose wrinkled in a snarl, eyes set on them.

“ _Kuroro Lucilfer._ ” He spat as if the name were a curse, fingers curling at the cuff of his sweater, rolling it up to his elbow. “Didn’t I ban you from this library?”

Leorio blinked.

Blinked again.

_Huh, so he wasn’t kidding when he said the librarian hated him._

He glanced back at his new friend to find his face split in a manic grin. “Sorry about this,” he said, half-mumble, half-laugh, dark eyes sliding to his. He looked almost apologetic. “See you around?”

Leorio watched paralyzed as the Goth Hottie swung himself onto the study table, boots catching and tearing against his meticulous notes, before clomping down the length of the table, landing with a resounding _boom_ as Kuroro made his way to the exit, leaving behind his books and pens and—

The hot librarian gave chase. Leorio tracked them, mused as the blond nimbly vaulted a book trolley, gaining speed as Goth Hottie hit the stairs. The sound of a collision eminent from beyond the snack machines as one of them shrieked. Several people pushed back their chairs to follow the chase, phones raised. A lone security guard rushing by.

Leorio’s hand closed around the Ramune marble.

A resolution to avoid the library from now on taking shape in his mind.

**Author's Note:**

> One fun thing about ChroLeo is that it would piss off Kurapika, and that makes me giggle. Oof, also the possibilities for angst, but we’ll touch on that later. I have plans. 
> 
> (1) Jimmy Urine is the lead singer of MSI  
> (2) Kuroro in this is something of a cryptid on campus. Probably homeless. Most likely high. He was definitely, probably high here.  
> (3) Be careful with the Ramune marbles kids.  
> Would love your thoughts 🥰  
> -cafeanna


End file.
